_in abstracto_, but according to facts and documents, we may take as
our guide the evolution of languages, or, better still, the progress
of the scientific spirit (as, for instance, by following the methods
of classification used in zoology, from antiquity up to the present
day); we might also have recourse to the development of religion,
for this is the same mental process applied to a different matter.
It is sufficient to indicate the various steps in a very cursory
manner.
It is a well known fact that the various races of mankind differ
greatly in their powers of abstraction and generalisation; some can
scarcely get beyond the concrete, while others disport themselves,
easily and swiftly, in the region of the abstract. This difference
of aptitude is expressed in their religions. Many peoples have never
passed beyond polydemonism—_i.e._, the cult of individual genii; in
other words, the realm of the concrete. Not to speak of savages,
such was the religion of the ancient Chinese empire (Tiele); such
the innumerable genii in the primitive religion of the Romans—a
people not greatly inclined to abstractions.
Certain tribes have, even at the present day, words to designate
every water-course in their country, but no general term for a
river. To have found such a one is a step in progress. It is the
same in the region of religious thought: by an analogous progress
the spirit of each tree is subordinated to the deity of the forest,
the various river-spirits to a river-god, etc. For a number of
particular divinities is substituted one specific and pre-eminent
divinity.
At a higher stage the mind seizes more remote resemblances and
constitutes one god for water, one for fire, one for the earth, so
that the spirits of the waters, the sky, and the earth are severally
grouped under the dominion of one power, known in Greece as Zeus,
Poseidon, or Hestia.
This generalising process which has taken place with regard to
natural phenomena also goes on in the social order. There have been,
successively, gods of clans, tribes, nations. We know how long
religions—even complex and highly organised ones—have remained
merely national: the god of a nation is its protector and
guardian—watches over it and over nothing else; but his existence
does not exclude that of other gods who are lords of other nations.
The transition to the universal, extra-national religions was
brought about by means of conquest and annexation, but also, and
more particularly, by philosophical speculation.
At the point we have reached there are divine hierarchies,
analogous, on one hand, to the ideal hierarchy of individuals,
species, genera, on the other to the hierarchies of human society:
they are conceived and constituted according to the human type. The
anarchy of Vedic India is reflected in the mythology of the Vedas,
the feudality of Egypt in its religion, Zeus resembles Agamemnon,
the Peruvian Inca is descended from the sun, and applies to his
empire the government of the solar deity; and “by an optical
illusion, human society seems to be a copy of the Divine
State.”[195]
Footnote 195:
For details, consult Tiele, _Manuel de l’histoire des Religions_,
Goblet d’Alviella, pp. 153-163. “The divine feudality is the
primordial fact in Egyptian religion, as political feudality is
the primordial fact of Egyptian history” (Maspero, _Histoire
Ancienne_).
In its movement towards absolute unity, the human mind has still
some stages to pass through before reaching the term. It conceives
of a divinity far superior to the rest, who, however, act under him
(Jupiter optimus maximus), and whom he does not suppress. This is
“monolatry” but not monotheism. We still find accommodations and
compromises in the conceptions of triads (trinities) and dyads
(associations of masculine and feminine divinities). In fact, pure
monotheism is a conquest of the metaphysical spirit, which traces
back the series of secondary causes to discover the first cause,
rather than an intuition of popular consciousness.
This survey of ascending generalisation is somewhat schematic, and
has been presented as an ideal restoration, though all its elements
have been taken from reality. Some nations have attained the first
stages only; others have, with much difficulty, passed beyond them;
others have passed through several at a bound. Perhaps the evolution
of religious ideas has not been in any two cases identical.
II. _Emotional Evolution._—It has been justly said that religious
feeling consists of two scales. One, in the key of fear, is composed
of painful and depressive states: terror, fright, fear, veneration,
respect, are its principal notes. The other, in the key of tender
emotion, is composed of pleasurable and expansive states:
admiration, confidence, love, ecstasy. One expresses a feeling of
dependence; the other of attraction, going even as far as reciprocal
union.
One of the first changes produced during this period of evolution is
the predominance of the second scale; in the combination of two
elementary emotions the proportional relation has changed, whence a
change in the nature of the resultant emotion. We have seen this in
the progressive effacement of the worship of the evil gods, in the
suppression of sanguinary sacrifices, first in the case of men, then
in that of animals; in the tendency to substitute for them simple
acts of homage.
A second change, and one of especial importance, consists in the
coalescence of the religious and the moral sentiment, which contract
a union so close that to many people it seems necessary and
indissoluble. We have seen that this is not the case, and that there
are religions without morality. Primarily, the religious feeling is
a special emotional form, the moral feeling is another form. There
are, first of all, the purely naturalistic religions, afterwards the
moral religions. A mass of facts demonstrate that, in the beginning,
the religious feeling is not only quite a stranger to morality, but
even in conflict with it. We know the bitter criticisms directed by
the Greek philosophers against the reigning religion, bearing, as it
did, the impress of myths springing from a primitive naturalism and
understood neither by orthodox believers nor by the philosophers
themselves. Contemporary criminologists have shown that prostitutes
and even ferocious criminals are most assiduous in their devotional
practices. This is because the religious feeling, in its origin and
taken by itself, is fundamentally selfish[196], being nothing else
but anxiety for one’s individual salvation. This superposition
of the moral sentiment has taken place in all the great
religions—_i.e._, all those which have had a complete evolution: in
Brahmanism and especially in Buddhism when compared with the Vedic
period, in the prophets of Israel, even among the Greeks, in the
mysteries, etc. People end by believing that a right state of mind
is the best of offerings.
-----
Footnote 196:
The theory of _do ut des_ is expressed with naïve completeness in
a Brahmanic hymn. “Well filled, O spoon [of the sacrifice], fly
down; well filled, return. As having agreed on a price, let us
make exchanges of strength and vigour. Give me, I give to thee;
bring to me, I bring to thee.” Better still: "If thou wilt injure
any one, say to Surya: ‘Strike such an one, and I will make thee
an offering,’ and Surya, to obtain the offering, will strike him."
(Barth, _Les Religions de l’Inde_, pp. 25, 26.)
-----
For most religions, the supreme question is that of human destiny.
Its history, having traversed two periods, the one naturalistic, the
other moral, shows once more that the religious and the moral
sentiment are, in their origin, two totally distinct feelings.
During the first period, we find no idea of retribution according to
men’s works. The life after death is a continuation or copy of the
earthly life, sometimes resembling it exactly, sometimes
better,—most often worse. We know the complaint of Achilles, in the
_Odyssey_ (xi), where Homer has left us a vivid picture of this
primitive belief; men remain slaves, masters, chiefs, or kings, as
they were during life. Nay, certain tribes, projecting their
aristocratic prejudices into the other world, believed that the
souls of chiefs alone were immortal.
During the second period there arises a belief in a preliminary
judgment on men’s actions, decisive of their future destiny. The
conceptions of this future life are various: temporary or eternal
penalties and rewards, transmigration upwards or downwards, total
liberation (_Nirvana_), etc., but all resting on a moral idea. This
notion appears at an early age among the Egyptians, in the judgment
of Osiris and the weighing of the souls. In the “Book of the Dead,”
of which a copy was placed in the tomb with every mummy, the defunct
addresses to the god a long enumeration of the good deeds he has
done and the faults he has not committed; it is remarkable that he
speaks, not of his oblations, but of his virtues.[197]
-----
Footnote 197:
This prayer will be found in full in Maspero, _op. cit._ (4th
ed.), p. 38.
-----
III.
At the point we have reached, the religious feeling has attained the
height of its development, and can henceforth only decline, so that
the third period need not detain us long. It may be summed up in the
following formula: an ever-growing predominance of the intellectual
(rational) element, a gradual effacement of the emotional element as
it tends to approximate to the intellectual feelings and to come
under that category.
When the march of thought towards unity has reached its limit in
pure monotheism, the work of theologians and especially of
metaphysicians tends to refine the conception of divinity, assumed
as First Cause, or moral ideal, or both at once, but always as an
inaccessible ideal, visible only in occasional glimpses. The
logical, necessary, inevitable consequence is the weakening of the
emotional state. In fact, we may lay down the following principle:—
From the perception to the image, and from the image to the concept,
the concomitant emotional element keeps on diminishing, other things
being equal; for we must take into account differences of
temperament and individual variations. This is only a summary way of
stating what I have so often said in Part I.: emotional states,
beyond all others, depend on physiological (visceral, motor, and
vaso-motor) conditions. Now it is clear that perception is the
operation which most rigorously demands complex organic conditions.
Among images or representations there are two categories: the vivid
and intense imagination approximates, by its hallucinatory tendency,
to the percept; while the cold and dull imagination, which is a bare
outline of things, approaches the nature of a concept. Finally, the
pure concept, reduced almost entirely to a sign, a substitute for
reality, is as much detached from organic conditions as it is
possible for a psychic state to be; it requires a _minimum_ of
physiology. In consequence, emotion, attacked at its source, flows
very scantily; and of the religious feeling properly so called there
remains only a vague respect for the unknowable—for the x—the last
survival of fear and a certain attraction towards the ideal which is
the last remnant of the love dominant during the second period.
We might say in clearer and simpler terms that religion tends to
become a _religious philosophy_, which is an entirely different
thing, for each corresponds to a distinct psychological condition,
one being a theoretic construction of argumentative reason, the
other the living work of a group of persons or an inspired great
man, involving the whole man, his thoughts and feelings. This
distinction is extremely important and throws light on our subject.
It would be easy to show that the great religions, at the height of
their development, become transmuted into a subtle metaphysic,
accessible to philosophers only. For the sake of impartiality, and
not to shock any one, let us place ourselves in a remote period. In
India, the religion which begins with the naturalism of the Vedas is
organised, becomes social and moral with Brahmanism, and attains a
transcendental ideality in the Bhâgavad-Gitâ. Take the following
passage, chosen at random among a hundred similar ones:—"I am
[Krishna is speaking] incomprehensible in form, subtler than the
subtlest of atoms. I am the light of the sun and moon; beyond the
darkness I am the brightness of flame, the rays of everything that
shines, sound in the ether, perfume on the earth, the eternal seed
of all that exists, the life of everything. As wisdom, I live in the
hearts of all. I am the goodness of the good, I am the beginning,
the middle and the end, eternity of time, the death and birth of
all."
Is this religion, or metaphysics, or rather a beautiful
philosophical poem, which moves us by the splendour of its images?
For such a doctrine to become a real religion it must be concreted
and condensed. That we may not, however, seem to cavil and dispute
about words, or come to an arbitrary decision that the one thing
is a religion and the other a religious philosophy, we may state
the question in an objective form. As soon as religious thought
ceases to have a worship or a ritual, and indeed finds itself
incompatible with such, it is a philosophical doctrine. Stripped
of all external and collective character, of all social form, it
ceases to be a religion, and becomes an individual and speculative
belief. Such is the deism of the eighteenth century, with all
analogous conceptions, where feeling is only present in a very
slight, almost imperceptible, degree.
Let us note, however, that in these periods of intellectual
refinement, feeling does not lose its rights: it has its revenge in
mysticism. In all great religions which have reached their highest
point, the antagonism between the two elements of belief, the
rational and the emotional, shows itself in the opposition between
dogmatists and mystics. History is full of their mutual antipathy:
in Christianity we find it, from the Gnostics, through the schools
of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, to the “pure love” of the
seventeenth century and later. The same may be said of other
religions: Islam, in spite of its dry monotheism and the poverty of
its ritual, has not escaped the universal law; it has had, and still
has, its mystical sects. When we study them we find that, for all
the differences of time, place, race and belief, the mystics, caring
little for rigorous dogmatism, all show a singularly strong family
likeness to each other. In this case it is argument which divides
and feeling which unites.
We have still to examine one question relating to the emotional
element alone: is religious emotion a _complete_ emotion? It is
worth while lingering over this, since many writers (not to mention
those who omit it altogether) set it down as a variety of the
intellectual feelings—_i.e._, of the coldest form of emotional life.
A complete emotion, as we know, includes, besides the purely psychic
state, a somatic resonance, a vibration of the organism, consisting
(_a_) of changes in the circulation, the respiration, and the
functions in general; (_b_) of movements, gestures and actions which
constitute its proper mode of expression. Without these, there is
merely an intellectual state. Does religious emotion fulfil these
two conditions?
(_a._) It has its physiological accompaniment; it penetrates as far
into the organism as any other. Since by its very nature it
contains, though in varying proportion, two elements, depression and
exaltation, let us very briefly survey their physiological
relations.
Depression is related to fear and under its acute forms has been
confounded with it. Does not the worshipper entering a venerated
sanctuary show all the symptoms of pallor, trembling, cold sweat,
inability to speak—all that the ancients so justly called _sacer
horror_? Physical and mental weakness makes us religious through
consciousness of human frailty. Austerities, macerations—in short,
the asceticism which is an institution in the so-called pessimistic
religions—though springing from a multitude of causes which need not
here be inquired into, prove at least that the physiological factor
is not regarded as indifferent. The Hindoo ascetics of the early
ages were able, by their insensate mortification, to dethrone the
gods and take their places—gods in their turn. The widespread belief
that austerities contribute to salvation is a very much modified
form of this.
Exaltation is related to love and tends to union, to possession. The
history of all ages abounds in physiological procedures made use of
for the artificial production of enthusiasm in the etymological
sense of the word, which implies having the deity within one’s self.
There are inferior forms: the mechanical exaltation produced by
dancing, or by the rhythmical music of primitive tribes, which
excites them and places them in a favourable mental attitude for
inspiration. Toxic exaltation: soma, wine, the Dionysiacs, the
Mænads. The sanguinary means so widespread in the cults of Asia
Minor: the Bona Dea and Atys, the Corybantes, the Galli, who
mutilated and gashed themselves with sword strokes; in the Middle
Ages, the Flagellants; and in our own day, Fakirs, dervishes, etc.
There are higher, less materialistic forms: the collective
excitement of pilgrimages and revivals, where the emotion of each
individual is increased by that of the rest; the artificial means,
known from antiquity, of attaining ecstasy, _i.e._, full possession;
the frequent confusion, which has so often excited the wrath of
theologians, between the language of carnal and that of mystical
love.[198]
-----
Footnote 198:
For many original and quoted observations showing the close
connection between the sexual and religious emotions, see the
recent series of valuable papers by Vallon and Marie, “Des
Psychoses Religieuses,” _Archives de Neurologie_, 1897.—ED.
-----
All these facts are well known, and thousands of others are recorded
in history. It is convenient to recall them in order to show that
they have their psychological reasons; they are not aberrations, as
might seem to be the case at first sight, but the necessary
conditions of intense emotion. If it is objected that some of them
border on madness, we may reply that every violent passion does the
same, and sometimes crosses the border-line.
(_b._) The religious sentiment, again, is attached to material
conditions by its mode of expression, which is ritual. Ritual
practices are not, as many think, purely exterior and artificial,
accessory and adventitious; they are a spontaneous creation,
originating in the nature of things. Every religion, great or
insignificant, is an organism constituted by a fundamental belief
attached to percepts, images, or concepts, _plus_ certain secondary
notions which are sometimes mutually contradictory, _plus_ an
emotional state. All this forms a living whole, which evolves,
vegetates, or retrogrades. This organic character distinguishes the
positive religions from the purely theoretical and metaphysical
conceptions, which are not alive, never have lived, and are nothing
but pure speculation. Now, as every animal organism, from the
infusoria to man, has its relational life,—_i.e._, relations with
external agents,—so religion, as an organism, has its life of
relations with the supernatural and mysterious powers on which man
believes himself to be dependent. This life is expressed by rites,
which are means of action, methods of establishing a relation.
The history of ritual is a chapter of the expression of the
emotions. The only difference is this: emotional expression, in the
sense given to the words by Duchenne, Darwin, their successors, and
the world in general, has an individualist character, showing fear,
anger, love, etc.; while ritual expression has a _social_ character;
being the spontaneous product of a collectivity, of a group, which
has become fixed and permanent, erected into an institution by the
influence of society, and safeguarded by tradition. On this subject
I cannot enter into detail; it is sufficient to remind the reader
that ritual is psychic in its origin. There have been two principal
phases in its development.
During the primitive period, ritual is the _immediate and direct_
expression of the religious sentiment, and bears the stamp of the
national character. Among the Greeks, it was graceful and joyous, as
is fitting for divinities who are merely superior and happy human
beings. Among the early Romans it has an agricultural and family
character, is formalist and methodical; the omission of the minutest
detail invalidates the sacrifice. The Mexicans immolated human
hecatombs to divinities who were intoxicated with blood. Rationalist
religions, being half philosophical, have little ritual and a dry
liturgy; they resemble persons of phlegmatic temperament, whose
gestures are rare and restrained. The religions of the imagination
and the heart, on the other hand, manifest themselves by the
splendour and exuberance of their ceremonies.
In the second period, we have the passage from the literal to the
figurative; ritual becomes _symbolism_. Since it is a means of
expression, a language, it is quite natural that this should be so,
and this phase corresponds to that of metaphor in spoken language.
Thus the offering of a lock of hair, or a figure made of dough,
becomes a substitute for human sacrifice. Having reached this point,
ritual can no longer be understood except through its history; but
worshippers still use it, without fully knowing its meaning, just as
they use metaphors without knowing their derivation, or being able
to trace them back to their primary sense. Lastly, there are some
rites which are simply survivals, analogous to a frown when we are
perplexed, vestiges of certain ways of feeling and acting which have
been, but have long ago disappeared.
The religious feeling is therefore a complete emotion, with its
train of physiological manifestations, and those writers who have
classed it among the intellectual feelings have only considered it
under its higher forms, and when it is on the point of extinction.
At the period of its fullest development, but rarely under either
its primitive or its intellectualised form, the religious feeling
may become a passion, yielding to no other in tenacity and violence,
which has its own special name: religious fanaticism. It borders on
madness without quite crossing the line. This passion would require
a psychological monograph to itself; and there is no lack of
documents whence to compose one. We may gather from these facts:
1. New proofs of the fundamental independence of the religious and
of the moral sentiments. In religious wars, persecution, the
torture inflicted on heretics, the murder of the chiefs of the
opposite party, are held to be meritorious acts; all which seems
inexplicable to persons of calm and deliberate sense. They would
be less astonished if they would consider that religious emotion,
when it reaches the point of a paroxysm of passion, becomes as
uncontrollable as violent love, and, like it, must have
satisfaction; that there is the firm belief in a right, superior
to human obligations, because of higher origin (a belief attaining
its highest degree in theomania, of which we shall speak
presently); and that the religious sentiment and the moral
sentiment, though having numerous points of contact and moments of
fusion, are yet, in their nature, essentially distinct, because
answering to two totally distinct tendencies of human nature.
2. We find a proof of the tendency of the religious feeling to
unite, group, _socialise_. Unity of belief creates the religious
community, as community of external and internal interests creates
the civil community. Both tend to expel dissidents (internal
enemies), and to conquer external enemies—in this case, the heathen.
The distinct or vague consciousness of the conditions of a society’s
existence, _i.e._, its instinct of conservation, determines its
morality and its way of acting. National religions, therefore, which
are the same thing as civil society, proselytise only slightly, or
not at all: the Greeks never tried to convert the Persians, neither
did the Romans the Gauls. The universal religions (Christianity,
Islam, Buddhism) forming societies other than, and outside
nationality, and transcending it, have aimed at spiritual conquest,
_i.e._, at their social extension.
IV.
The question whether there exist any tribes completely devoid of all
religious belief has been extensively discussed. That there are any
such seems doubtful, when we take into account, on the one hand, the
reticence of the savage towards strangers with regard to his own
feelings and beliefs; and on the other, the scanty psychological
equipment of travellers, who frequently understand by religion only
a developed and organised cult. The fact, even were it proved, would
be but of slight value, since it could only be the case among the
very lowest specimens of humanity.[199] A question scarcely ever
asked is this: Are there _individuals_ (not social groups) utterly
without religious feeling? We must eliminate idiots, imbeciles, and
the uneducated deaf and dumb; we are speaking of normal men living
in some society or other, all of which have a religion. I am
distinctly inclined to answer in the affirmative, though I find no
decisive observation on this point. The case would be analogous to
those of moral blindness already studied, to the absence, if it
exists, of all æsthetic feeling; it would denote a lacuna in the
emotional life. It should be noted that it is only in this
department that such a lacuna can occur. No normal man, living in a
society, can have his mind closed to religious _ideas_, can ignore
their existence, their object, their significance; but they may have
no hold on him, may remain within his consciousness as a foreign
substance, originating no tendency and exciting no emotion; they may
be conceived without being felt.
-----
Footnote 199:
For this discussion, Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, I. xi., and
Réville, _Religions des Peuples non Civilisés_, i., pp. 10 _et
seq._, may be consulted.
-----
I have already reminded the reader that the religious feeling may
become a violent passion; it may even pass this limit, take a
chronic form, and enter the region of pathology. For the alienist,
religious madness is not a morbid entity, but a symptom; it
sometimes exists by itself, but is more often associated with
epilepsy, hysteria, and the forms of melancholia. From a
psychological point of view, it has to be studied by itself, as a
complement to the normal state. Considered thus, from the purely
psychological standpoint, its manifestations, though very diverse,
may be reduced to a simple classification: the depressive, or
asthenic; and the exalted, or sthenic forms.
I. The depressive forms spring up and grow on the soil of
melancholia. Their physiological criteria are the symptoms so often
described—lowering of the vital functions, and so on. Their
emotional criterion is fear in all its varieties, ranging from the
simple scruple to panic terror; and the intellectual criterion, the
possession by a fixed idea. Religious madness follows a course
depending on character, education, environment, epoch, and form of
belief. So those who believe in predestination are tortured by the
idea of having committed the unpardonable sin. This obsession,
frequent among Protestants, is rare among Catholics, who admit the
possibility of absolution.[200]
-----
Footnote 200:
Hack Tuke says he has met with only a single case among Catholics.
(_Dict. of Psychol. Medicine_, Art. “Religious Insanity.”)
-----
One form, which we might call _subjective_, consists in religious
melancholy pure and simple, in which the patient believes himself
continually guilty, rejected, damned. In its anxious form it is
characterised by scruples about everything, lamentations over
imaginary crimes or faults. This state is connected with two primary
emotions, both of which have a depressive character: on one side
fear, on the other the self-feeling under its negative form of
humility and dejection. An unconscious or conscious course of
reasoning leads the subject to a feeling of abjectness and
self-contempt; he tries to weaken himself, to make himself worthy of
pity. Asceticism, though, rightly or wrongly, invoking moral reasons
in its own favour, rests on the fundamental desire of depreciating
the individual, at least in this life. This appears, even in its
simple and mitigated forms, but still more in its extravagances (the
monasticism of the fifth century, Simeon Stylites, etc.), in the
cases of castration, mutilation, partial destruction, and finally,
in the religious suicide of the Hindoos who threw themselves before
the car of Jaganath.
A second form, which for want of a better term may be called
_objective_, is demoniac melancholia—the delusion of obsession or
possession,—which, formerly superabundant in all religions, has now
become rarer.[201] In obsession, or _external_ demonomania, the
patient is not in the true sense possessed; he hears, sees, feels,
smells the spirits who are obstinately determined on his ruin, but
he does not feel them _within_ him. In possession, or _internal_
demonomania, they are inside him. There is doubling of the
personality, with sensory, visceral, and psychomotor hallucinations,
these last consisting of internal voices which the possessed person
hears speaking inside him and in spite of himself.
-----
Footnote 201:
For some recent observations see Krafft-Ebing, _op. cit._, vol.
ii. § 1; Dagonet, _Maladies mentales_, pp. 321 _et seq._
-----
II. The morbid exaltation of the religious feeling is derived from
attraction and love, as depression springs from fear. Related to
joy, and sometimes to megalomania, it is accompanied by partial or
total augmentation of both the physical and psychical life.
Ecstasy is a transitory and comparatively passive form. Seen from
without, it resembles catalepsy in the insensibility to external
impressions, and suspension of sensory activity. It differs from it
on the motor side. The ecstatic has not the “flexibility of wax” and
the complete immobility; he can move, walk, speak, and his face can
assume any given expression. Seen from within, ecstasy is an intense
state of consciousness, of which the recollection remains after
awaking, while catalepsy is attended by unconsciousness, or, at
least, complete oblivion. Its psychology is simple enough, if,
neglecting details, we confine ourselves to the essential
conditions. The confessions of ecstatics, which are tolerably
numerous, agree in their principal features: (1) restriction of the
area of consciousness, with one intense and overmastering
representation serving as the pivot and only centre of association;
(2) an emotional state—rapture—a form of love in its highest degree,
with desire and the pleasure of possession, which, like profane
love, only finds its end in complete fusion and unification (ἐνῶσις
of the Alexandrians). The declarations of the great mystics, however
involved they may be in metaphor, leave us in no doubt on this
point;[202] and their critics, even theologians, have reproached
them with frequently being mistaken in the nature of their love.
-----
Footnote 202:
For further details respecting ecstasy I refer the reader to my
_Maladies de la volonté_, ch. v., and to Godfernaux, _Le Sentiment
et la Pensée_, p. 49. Purely medical works contain little that is
instructive with regard to the psychology of this state; the works
of the mystics themselves may be studied with far more profit.
-----
A more stable and active form of religious exaltation is
theomania—_i.e._, “a mental state in which the subject believes
himself to be God, or at least inspired by Him to reveal His will to
men.” To draw a hard and fast line between the founders of
religions, the reformers, the promoters of religious orders, and
pure theomaniacs, is as difficult as to indicate the precise point
at which a violent love becomes madness. We might make use of a
practical test, and say that the one has succeeded where the others
have failed, but this would be too simple, success and failure
depending on a variety of causes. This discussion, moreover, is out
of place here. It is sufficient to remark that theomania is, in its
psychical characteristics, the complete antithesis to demonomaniac
melancholia. Instead of the sorrow of the possessed person with the
enemy lodged in his own body, we find an unalterable joy, which can
be affected neither by persecution, nor misfortunes, nor tortures.
To the feeling of abjectness is opposed the delusion of grandeur.
However modest a man may be by nature, or as a result of reflection,
he cannot with impunity believe himself chosen by the Deity as His
prophet, to speak and act in His name.
The preceding sketch, whence I have purposely eliminated details and
observations (of which, as is well known, there is no lack), has but
one object—viz., to show that the primary constituents of the
religious sentiment may serve as a guide to its pathology, which
rests entirely on fear and love. I may add that none among morbid
emotions has—and still more, has had—a more marked tendency to rapid
propagation in epidemic form: a further proof that, in its nature,
it is not so much individual as social.
CHAPTER X.
THE ÆSTHETIC SENTIMENT.
_Its origin: the theory of play, and its variants—Æsthetic
activity is the play of the creative imagination in its
disinterested form. Its instinctive nature—Transition from
simple play to æsthetic play: primitive art of pantomimic
dancing—Derivation of the arts in motion; of the arts at
rest—Why was æsthetic activity evolved?—Art had, in the
beginning, a social utility—Evolution of the æsthetic
sentiment—Its sociological aspect: progression from the
strictly social character towards individualism in the
different arts—Its anthropological aspect: progress from
strictly human character towards beings and things as a
whole—The feeling for nature—The feeling for the sublime only
partially belongs to æsthetics—Its evolution: it is not
æsthetic in its origin, but becomes so—Why there are not two
æsthetic senses—The sense of the comic—Psychology of
laughter—It has more than one cause—Theory of superiority.
Theory of discord—These correspond to two distinct stages, one
of which is foreign to æsthetics—Physiology of laughter.
Theory of nervous derivation—Theory of tickling—Pathology. Are
there cases of complete æsthetic insensibility? Difficulties
and transpositions of the subject—Pathological function of
emotion: pessimistic tendencies, megalomania, influence of
unconscious activity—Pathological aspects of the creative
imagination; its degrees—Reason why the intense image, in
artists, does not pass into action; ways in which it is
modified—Cause of this deviation; its advantages._
While all the emotions hitherto enumerated have their origin and
their _raison d’être_ in the preservation of the individual as an
individual, or as a social being, the æsthetic feeling, as we know,
differs from the rest by the fact that the activity which produces
it, aims, not at the accomplishment of a vital or social function,
but at the mere pleasure of exercising itself. The more directly a
tendency is connected with life, the more necessary, urgent, and
serious it is, and the less it paves the way for the æsthetic
feeling, which must always have a surplus to expend. However, its
inutility, which is only relative, has been exaggerated; for it
tends in some measure to the conservation of the individual and the
race, being, and especially having been in the past, a _social_
factor, though an incidental and subordinate one, as we shall see
afterwards.
In conformity with the plan adopted, we shall remain strictly within
the bounds of psychology, avoiding any excursions into the history
or theory of art, except for the purpose of seeking facts and
illustrations. We shall thus have to study the origin of æsthetic
emotion, the law of its development, and, subsequently, two forms of
emotional life, rightly or wrongly, considered as related to it: the
sense of the sublime and that of the comic; and we shall conclude by
some remarks on its morbid manifestations.
I.
On the origin of æsthetic feeling, and consequently on the character
peculiar to it among all other emotions, writers belonging to all
schools of philosophy are in agreement to an extent rarely found
elsewhere. It has its source in a superfluity of life—a luxury of
activity; in fact it is a form of play. Schiller is supposed to have
been the first to state its formula: “Supreme art is that in which
play reaches its highest point, when we play, so to speak, from the
depths of our being. Such is poetry, and especially dramatic
poetry.... As the gods of Olympus, free from all wants, knowing
nothing of work or of duty, which are limitations of being, occupied
themselves in taking mortal forms in order to play at human
passions, so, in the drama, we play with the achievements, crimes,
virtues, vices, which are not our own.”[203] Kant referred the
beautiful to the free play of the intellect and the imagination, and
his immediate disciples follow him on this point. Schopenhauer says
the same thing in other words, “Art is a momentary liberation.”
Finally, Herbert Spencer develops this thesis, from the experimental
point of view, by connecting it with biological conditions.
-----
Footnote 203:
This theory of play, however, appears, from recent researches, to
be of English origin, and due to Home (1696-1782), so that, when
taken up again by Herbert Spencer (_Principles of Psychology_,
vol. ii., last chapter), it would seem only to have returned to
its original home.
-----
The primary activity of our physical and mental faculties relates to
proximate ends: the conservation of the individual, and his
adaptation to his environment. The secondary activity is its own
end, and is of somewhat late appearance in the animal kingdom. The
lower animals are shut up in a narrow circle: they feed, defend
themselves, sleep, and propagate their species. On a higher level
appears “a useless activity of unused organs” (Spencer, _op. cit._,
ii. p. 630); as in the rat with incisors growing continuously in
adaptation to the excessive wear they undergo; the cat, exercising
her claws on the bark of a tree or the covering of a chair, etc.
Higher still appears the true play-impulse; dogs pretending to hunt
or fight, cats running after a ball which they catch, push away,
catch again, and pursue, bounding as if after their prey. In
children, we know the pre-eminent function of play, and how it
differs according to sex, disposition, and age: it has its
individual characteristics, and is often a creation.
Play is, however, a genus of which æsthetic activity is only a
species, and in determining the peculiarities of this species, the
authorities are somewhat vague.[204] The most definite, Grant Allen,
in his _Physiological Æsthetics_, has attempted a solution. For him
play is the disinterested exercise of the _active_ functions, as in
racing, hunting, etc.; art, that of the _receptive_ functions, as in
the contemplation of a picture or a monument, the reading of a poem,
listening to music, etc. This is definite, but quite inadmissible;
for it is clear that æsthetic emotion requires a certain mental
activity in the spectator, not to mention the creator.[205]
-----
Footnote 204:
In a recent book, very rich in observations on the play of animals
(_Die Spiele der Thiere_, 1896, the only existing monograph on the
subject), Groos substitutes for the thesis of a superabundance of
energy that of a primary instinct, of which play, in all its
forms, is the expression. I cannot see that the two theses exclude
one another. Some base their argument on external manifestations.
Groos connects them with an instinct—_i.e._, a motor disposition
_sui generis_. I am inclined to take Groos’s view, the more so as
the fundamental idea of the present work is that of finally
reducing the affective life to the sum of a set of tendencies
fixed in the organisation.
For the rest, the psychology of play is still awaiting
treatment in its totality. The word, in fact, denotes
several entirely different psychical manifestations. In its
first stage, it is unconscious in its origin, spontaneous,
an expenditure for the mere pleasure of spending; but,
however disinterested in its source and its aim, it is
useful; in children, play is often a form of imitation,
often a form of experimentation, an attempt at easy and
unconstrained exploration of beings and things. In the
second stage, it has become reflective; pleasure is sought
for its own sake, and with full consciousness of the reason;
it is a complex state formed by the fusion of variable
elements. In a special study, which, however, is merely
tentative (_Die Reize des Spieles_, 1883), Lazarus adopts
the following classification: (_a_) games connected with
physical activity, (_b_) the attraction of all kinds of
spectacles, (_c_) intellectual games, (_d_) games of chance.
This last item alone might well prove a tempting one to a
psychologist. It has a quasi-passive, somewhat blunted form,
being what Pascal called a diversion (that which turns
aside, distracts), a way of pretending to work, or filling
up the blanks of existence, of “killing time.” It has an
active form, the gambling passion, whose tragedy is as old
as humanity, and which is made up of attraction towards the
unknown and the hazardous, of daring, of emulation, of the
desire of victory, the love of gain, and the fascination of
acquiring wealth wholesale, instantaneously, without effort.
These and other elements show that, in play as in love, it
is complexity which produces intensity. The absence of any
complete first-hand studies on this subject shows once more
the scarcity of monographs relating to the psychology of the
feelings.
Footnote 205:
For a detailed criticism of this view, see Guyau’s _Problèmes de
l’esthétique contemporaine_, p. 12. This writer, afraid of
dilettantism, substituted for the theory of play that of life, as
a source of art. I do not see what is to be gained by substituting
a vague formula for a definite one. Moreover, are not all emotions
connected with life?
-----
The peculiar characteristic of this superfluous activity, this form
of play, is the fact of its spending itself _in a combination of
images and ending in a creation which has its aim in itself_; for
creative imagination sometimes has practical utility as its aim. It
differs from the other forms of play only in the materials employed
and the direction followed. We may say, more briefly, that it is the
play of the creative imagination in its disinterested form.
This is not the place for a dissertation on the creative
imagination, which seems to have been somewhat neglected by
contemporary psychology, so lavish in studies of what used to be
called the passive imagination (_i.e._, visual, auditory, motor,
etc., images). I wish only to indicate, as belonging to our subject,
its relations to instinctive activity.
When we have said that images, their association and dissociation,
reflection, and emotion are the constituent elements of the creative
imagination, it will be found that we have omitted an irreducible
factor, the principal element, the _proprium quid_ of this mental
operation, that which gives the first impulse, which is the cause of
creative work, and constitutes its unity. This _x_, which, for want
of a better term, we may call spontaneity, is of the nature of an
instinct. It is a _craving_ to create, equivalent, in the
intellectual order, to the generative craving in the physiological
order. It shows itself at first, modestly, in the invention of
childish games; later, and more brilliantly, in the budding of
myths, that collective and anonymous work of primitive humanity;
later still, in art properly so called. There always remains the
craving for superimposing on the world of sense another world,
having its origin in man, who believes in it, at least for the
moment. If it should seem a mistake to compare instinct, which is
fixed, with the æsthetic activity, which passes for absolute
liberty, we must remember that we are dealing, not with their
development, but with their origin; and in that point they coincide.
_True_ creative activity has the innateness of instinct, an
innateness in this case to be rendered by the word precocity. This
is proved by innumerable facts; at some unforeseen moment the spark
flashes out; experience has hardly anything to do with it. It has
its necessity and its fatality; the creator has his task to
accomplish; he is fitted for one kind of work only; even when he has
some adaptability, he is imprisoned within his own manner, and keeps
his own individual style; if he leaves it, he fails altogether, or
becomes a bad imitator of others. It has its impersonality; creation
is not the child of the will, but of that unconscious impulse which
we call inspiration; it seems to the creator as if another acted in
him and through him, transcended his personality and made him a mere
mouth-piece. What further is needed to show, as far as origin is
concerned, the characteristics of instinct? In physiological
creation the fertilised ovule assimilates to itself, according to
its nature, the materials of its environment, and, following the
laws of an inexorable determinism, becomes, in the end, a healthy
individual or a monster. In the case of instinct, an external or
internal excitation brings into play a pre-established mechanism,
and the act goes straight to its end, or turns to a gross error. In
æsthetic creation the process is identical; we know by means of
numerous biographical documents, which I cannot here reproduce, that
the creative moment with artists presents itself under one or other
of two forms: either a rapid intuition, in which the generating idea
appears as a whole, or a fragmentary, partial view, which gradually
completes itself; unity established beforehand or arrived at
afterwards; the intuition or the fragment. The intellectual ovule,
too, is forced to this dilemma—revelation or abortion.
I do not insist on a subject which would require to be dwelt on at
length, and which I propose to treat in another work where it will
be more in place; but it was necessary to point out that under this
superabundance of strength, this vaguely described useless activity,
there is something more definite, an active tendency utilising this
superfluous energy, and giving to it various directions, among
others that of intellectual creation, with images for materials—a
creative instinct having its type in primitive animism, the common
source of myths and arts.
Let it not be objected that all this concerns the creator only, and
that he alone feels this craving, this tendency, this inclination to
act, which is the root of æsthetic emotion. He who experiences it in
any degree, however coarse or however subtle—spectator, listener,
dilettante—must perform over again, in a measure proportioned to his
powers, the creator’s work. Without some analogy between their
natures, however slight, the spectator will feel nothing; he must
live the artist’s life and play his game, incapable of producing by
himself, but capable of being, and even forced to be, an echo.
Now let us lay aside these theoretic considerations for a question
of _fact_. Can we find the transition between play under its simple
form of movement, expended for the sake of pleasure, and æsthetic
activity, _i.e._, creation-play? This transition must represent the
origin and primitive form of art. This primordial art, now
impoverished, dried up, like an old tree which has emptied all its
sap into its suckers, is dancing, or rather the pantomime-dance
forming an inseparable whole. In its origin it is “an expression of
muscular force simulating the acts of life.” No commentary is needed
to show that here the junction between superfluous motor activity
and æsthetic creation takes place: dancing includes both. Since we
are at the source, it is as well to insist on this, all the more so,
as the importance of this primordial art has in general either been
forgotten or insufficiently emphasised by psychology.[206] Let us
note its principal characteristics.
-----
Footnote 206:
We must except Sergi, from whom I have borrowed the above
definition. In his _Psychologie Physiologique_, Bk. IV., chap.
vi., sec. 374, he gives some interesting historical details.
-----
First of all, the artist finds his material in himself: a
possibility of movements useful neither for seeking food, nor for
defending himself, nor for attacking others, nor for his
preservation, or that of his species, in any form whatever.
This art is primordial. We find it in the early stages of all
peoples and tribes, even the most savage. The documents collected by
ethnologists leave us in no doubt on this point, except, perhaps,
with regard to the Arabs and the Fuegians; and, even in their case,
there is nothing to prove that it is not our insufficient
information that is at fault. We may therefore call it the natural
art _par excellence_.
It is universal. It is found in all latitudes, all ages, all races,
as much among the utilitarian Chinese and the grave Romans of the
early ages, as among nations reputed artistic or frivolous.
It is symbolical, it means something, it expresses a feeling, a
state of mind; that is to say, it has the essential and fundamental
character of æsthetic creation. Originally, dancing had a sexual,
warlike, or religious significance; it was appropriated to all the
solemn acts of public and private life. Among the natives of North
America there were dances for war, for peace, for diplomatic
negotiations, for hunting expeditions in common; others, again, for
each of the gods, for harvests, deaths, births, marriages. The
negroes have a passion for it which almost reaches delirium. The
ancient Chinese judged of the manners of a people from their dances;
they had themselves a great number, bearing different names. This
enumeration would be endless; it is simpler to say that dancing
marks a phase of symbolism which all races of mankind have passed
through.
Indubitably, in the genesis of the æsthetic sentiment, we have here
the first stage, semi-physiological, semi-artistic, play becoming
art. Let us further remark that primitive dancing is a composite
manifestation, including the rudimentary form of two acts destined,
later on, to separate in the course of their evolution—music and
poetry. Poor music indeed, consisting sometimes of three notes only,
but remarkable for the strictness of rhythm and measure, and poor
poetry, consisting in a short sentence incessantly repeated, or even
in monosyllables without precise signification.
Such is the original form of the arts aiming at motion. As for the
arts whose result is repose, they are, with the exception of
architecture, indirectly derived from the same source. Dancing,
being a pantomime, has plastic qualities; it is living plasticity.
Furthermore, as a social and ceremonial act, it requires ornaments
which at first were applied to the human body: drawings, tattooings,
or colours simply smeared on. Later on, the representation of forms
and colours is externalised, passes from men to things, in order to
fashion or modify them, becoming ornamentation, sculpture, painting.
We have just seen how æsthetic activity arose, and how humble was
its origin. Another question still remains in debate: _Why_ was it
evolved? In fact, by its nature, by its definition, it seems to have
had no utility as a stimulant, since it springs from superfluous
activity and is not bound to the conditions of individual existence.
The persistence and development of the individual social, moral, and
religious emotions explain themselves through utility. The
intellectual or scientific emotion, also, was at first entirely
practical, and therefore useful: knowledge is power. The case of
æsthetic emotion stands alone. How, amid the rough struggle for life
in which humanity was involved, was it able, not merely to blossom,
but to live and prosper? It is no answer to say that it resisted and
grew, because rooted in an instinct, a craving; for this instinct,
by reason of its biological uselessness, might have become
atrophied, or disappeared, like functionless organs, and it is the
contrary that has happened. Darwin’s well-known explanation based on
sexual selection, the preference of the females for the most
skilful, the most graceful, the most brilliantly coloured, or the
best singers among the males, is only partial, available for certain
species of animals, not for all. More than this, the tendency
dominant of late years to deny absolutely the heredity of acquired
modifications cuts us off from the hypothesis of the transmission,
consolidation, and increase of the æsthetic instinct in the course
of generations. Hence the great embarrassment in which Weismann,
Wallace, and all others who take this negative view, find
themselves. They admit variation and selection only—not the fixing
of variations by heredity. The first factor is sufficient to explain
the appearance of the æsthetic activity, but the other two,
selection and transmission, have nothing to do with it; so that,
however frequently we may suppose this creative instinct to appear,
it would always have to begin again at the beginning. The two
above-mentioned writers have been much exercised on this point. How
could the aptitudes for mathematics, music, and art in general, so
rudimentary in primitive man, take so marvellous a flight? “In the
struggle for life these mental gifts may very possibly have proved
serviceable from time to time, and even of decisive importance; but
in most cases they are not so, and no one will pretend that a gift
for music or poetry, ever, in primitive times, increased the chances
of founding a family.... These are not qualities which favour the
preservation of the species; they could not, therefore, have been
formed by natural selection.”[207]
Footnote 207:
Weismann, _Essais sur l’hérédité_ (French ed., p. 475); Wallace,
_Darwinism_, chap. xv. Before these, Schneider (_Freud und Leid_,
pp. 28, 29), an adherent of the English theory of the inherent
uselessness of the æsthetic activity, has tried to connect it with
the conservation of the individual and the species by an extremely
bold and problematical hypothesis resting on heredity. If we
experience different feelings before a stormy sea, or a calm, blue
lake, covered with boats, or a vast plain, or snow-covered
mountains, “it is because our feelings are those of primitive man,
when he lived really in the midst of nature and had to wrest his
daily bread from it. Through countless generations our ancestors,
on finishing their daily task, in the evening have thought with
satisfaction of the work accomplished; it was in this frame of
mind that they looked on the approach of evening and the sunset.
Why does a landscape representing it produce on us an impression
of repose and peace? We have no other answer than this: for
countless generations past the evening sky has been associated
with the consciousness of work finished and a feeling of rest and
satisfaction.” Apart from its extreme flimsiness, this hypothesis
would not be applicable to all the arts.
There is only one possible answer: æsthetic activity, at its origin,
had some indirect utility as regards conservation, being based on
directly useful forms of activity to which it was auxiliary.
Besides, to connect art with play, itself connected with an excess
of nervous and muscular energy, is to place it in mediate relation
with the vital functions. We have still to define the nature and the
measure of its utility.
The arts which aim at motion, at their first appearance consisted
entirely of dancing, accompanied by song. Weismann tells us that the
musical sound is the complement of the sense of hearing, which
itself is connected with natural selection, because it is not a
matter of indifference, either for animals or men, that they should
clearly hear and rightly distinguish the sounds of inanimate or
animate nature, so as to act accordingly. This, however, explains
nothing, acuteness of hearing and musical ear being two entirely
distinct mental states, each requiring distinct cerebral and psychic
conditions. It is in the dance accompanied by song and gesture that
we must seek for the explanation; it had a _social_ utility, it
favoured concerted movements and common action, it gives unity, and
the consciousness and visual perception of unity, to an assemblage
of men; it is a discipline, a preparation for corporate attack or
defence, a school of war. Hence the capital importance of _time_.
The Kaffirs, in immense numbers, sing and dance with such precision
as to resemble a huge machine in motion. Among several tribes the
rhythm must be perfect, and any one who makes a mistake is punished
with death.[208]
Footnote 208:
Wallaschek, _Primitive Music_, chap. x., which may be consulted
for details.
In the case of the arts whose result is repose, the explanation is
more difficult. We have seen that there is a possible transition
from one group to the other,—dancing being a living picture,—but
what utility is there in the ornamentation of utensils, in drawing,
in sculpture? Wallaschek (_op. cit._) supposes that savages drew or
carved horrible figures on their weapons in order to frighten the
enemy, as is still seen among the Dyaks. I prefer Grosse’s
explanation, as being at the same time more positive and more
general.[209] In the first place, ornaments are signs, and have as
such a social value. Besides, and more especially, primitive plastic
art supposes two factors whose development must be favoured among
savages by the struggle for existence: good visual memory and great
manual skill. They are, like children, very acute observers; they do
not pass beyond the narrow limit of their sensations; but within
that limit they see, hear, feel, and smell with extreme precision;
their existence depends on it. They have (as can be proved by
numerous instances) an excellent memory for forms and figures.
Lastly, they have few tools, but they know how to use them; they are
skilful because their life also depends on their skill. The
distance, therefore, between the practice of arts serviceable to
life and the primitive practice of art is not so very great after
all.
-----
Footnote 209:
_Die Anfänge der Kunst_ (1894). This book, extremely lucid and
interesting, full of ethnographic documents and general
considerations, may be consulted with great advantage on the
question of the beginnings of art. On the special point which
occupies us, see pp. 191 _et seq._
-----
In the beginning, art is dependent on and auxiliary to the useful;
the æsthetic activity is too wide to subsist by its own strength;
but it will be emancipated later on. We shall return to the old
question of the “relations between the beautiful and the useful,”
which cannot be cleared up unless we turn our attention from
civilised ages and countries—where the divorce is already
accomplished—to the remote epoch of their origin.
II.
Let us now, starting from its source, see how the æsthetic sentiment
has, in the course of ages, come to specialise and differentiate
itself. Its evolution presents two aspects—one sociological, the
other anthropomorphic—which in the nature of things are inseparable,
but which, for the sake of clearness in exposition, we shall study
separately.
1. The æsthetic feeling, of a strictly social character in its
origin, tends progressively towards individualism. A division of
labour takes place in it, rendering its manifestations more numerous
and more complex.
2. The æsthetic sentiment, of a strictly human character at its
origin, gradually loses this in order to embrace the whole of
nature. It passes from human beauty in its organic form to abstract
beauty, loved for its own sake.
Let us consider its developmental progress under this double aspect:
I. In recent times, especially in France, many writers have occupied
themselves with the relations between the æsthetic feeling and
social conditions. It is sufficient to mention the names of Taine,
Hennequin, Guyau,[210] but all are studying the question under its
contemporary, or at least its civilised form; they place themselves
at an epoch when art has already to a great extent lost its social
value. For Hennequin, a form of art expresses a nation, because,
having adopted it, the nation recognises itself therein as in a
mirror. The famous theory (Taine’s) of the work of art as the
necessary product of race, time, and environment is much contested
and very vague. Still more vague is Guyau’s view: “Art is, through
the medium of feeling, an extension of society to all natural beings
and even to beings conceived as transcending the limits of nature,
or, in fact, to fictitious beings, created by human imagination.” It
is an abuse to words to apply the name of society in this way: a
society implies solidarity; every other use of the word is merely
arbitrary. The question is, therefore, Has art been a co-operative
factor in the establishment of solidarity among men? It is in this
sense only that it has or has had a social character. Now, to find
in it this characteristic in a clear, positive, incontestable form,
we must go back to the beginning, to an epoch when æsthetic needs
collaborated in social unity and served a social end. This
characteristic is, as we have already said, so evident—at least as
far as the arts resulting in movement are concerned—that it seems
preferable briefly to recapitulate how differentiation and
individualism gradually came about.
-----
Footnote 210:
For a historical survey of the question see Grosse, _Anfänge der
Kunst_, pp. 12 _et seq._
-----
We have seen that, in the beginning, dancing is everywhere and
always a collective manifestation, regulated and safeguarded by
tradition, later on by laws, as in the Greek republics, and later
still subject to the influence of fancy and individual caprice—to
the great scandal of the conservatives. But the evolution of this
art has been poor enough when compared with its two acolytes, poetry
and music. Poetry, even when separated from dancing, long remains
inseparable from music; it is sung and accompanied by the playing of
an instrument. It is at first anonymous; whoever the author may be,
it is common property; it belongs to the clan, the group, as if it
were the work of all. Later,—the first social differentiation,—there
are found corporations of poet-singers: the ἀοιδοὶ, rhapsodists,
jongleurs, minstrels, bards; among the higher Negro races of the
Upper Nile these corporations are held inviolable, even in time of
war.[211] Afterwards the poet’s individualism, freed from its
association with music, accentuates and asserts itself, and becomes
the definitive form among civilised nations. It would not be rash to
say that, in our day, poetry is tending more and more in the
direction of pure subjectivity and absolute individualism. Stuart
Mill even ventured to say, “All poetry is of the nature of
soliloquy”; and according to him, “the peculiarity of poetry appears
to lie in the poet’s utter unconsciousness of a listener”;[212]
which proves how little he understood of its true origin. I do not
inquire whether this sort of isolation in an ivory tower is a gain
or a loss for poetry; but I observe its growing frequency as
civilisation advances; the complete antithesis to its collective
character in the earliest ages.
-----
Footnote 211:
Letourneau, _L’évolution littéraire chez les différents peuples_,
p. 66, a work which may be consulted for documentary evidence.
Footnote 212:
Quoted by Grosse (p. 48), who gives an acute criticism of this
view, rightly pointing out that a strictly individualistic art is
“neither thinkable nor discoverable.”
-----
Indissolubly associated at first with dancing and poetry, music
shares the common destiny; it is subject to inflexible rules, it is
a State function, an instrument of education and order. Its function
among the Greeks, especially the Dorians, is well known, as also its
importance to philosophers who, like Plato, wished to reform or
reconstruct society. In two other widely separated parts of the
world, among absolutely different people, we find, in China, 2000
years before our era, a Minister of Music, whose importance is
continually insisted on by the philosophers; and in Mexico, before
the conquest, an official academy of music, regulating both that art
and poetry. It is therefore regarded as being, in the first place,
of social utility. It thus passes through a process of evolution
similar to that already described in the case of poetry, slowly
separates from it, and still more slowly takes its great flight to
become the least imperfect mode of expressing the most refined and
intimate feelings, and to admit of no rule outside itself. The
separation which took place at the Renaissance between religious
music, which is in its essence collective, and secular music, which
tends towards individualism, would, if need were, supply other
proofs in support of the regular march of æsthetic evolution.
In the group of plastic arts, the relation between æsthetic activity
and individual or social utility shows itself less clearly, and
rather under the form of a parasitical superfetation. Here the
evolution has started from two quite distinct sources: the one,
leading to no great results, is the ornamentation of the human body,
which, however, has, as we have seen, a certain social value as a
sign. The other, architecture, is for this group the equivalent of
dancing, _i.e._, the primordial and synthetic form whence
differentiation started. As soon as man had passed the period of
caverns and such shelters, and had learnt to construct durable
buildings, he worked at first for gods and kings, who embodied the
social order and were alone worthy of so great an effort, or for the
assemblies and deliberations of the clan, as is seen even at the
present day in the case of many savages, whose rudimentary
architecture is only shown in the construction of the communal
house. The work is at once architecture, sculpture, and painting,
forming an inseparable whole, as do dancing, poetry, and music. Then
the association was gradually dissolved, the independence of each
art asserted itself, and each of these arts, at first exclusively
reserved for kings or the community at large, afterwards entered the
service of the rich and great, and, in time, of every one, thus
becoming more and more individualised.
In short, the relation between disinterested æsthetic feeling, and
practical, utilitarian ways of thinking, would be scarcely
intelligible if we confined our attention to civilised ages. It has
varied greatly, and in these variations we can distinguish three
principal stages.
The first stage is that of close relation. Æsthetic pleasure, in its
rudimentary form, co-exists with the useful, or rather, is involved
with it in a common state of consciousness—the agreeable. To be
felt, it must possess some individual or social utility. This mental
state is still, at this very hour, that of many human beings,
probably of the majority.[213]
-----
Footnote 213:
Grant Allen (_Mind_, xx., Oct. 1880) points out that Homer
describes beautiful districts as “fertile,” “rich in wheat,”
“horse-feeding,” etc. He heard a peasant in the neighbourhood of
Hyères praising the magnificence of a cultivated plain covered
with vegetables, while showing the greatest contempt for a
picturesque bit of woodland. An American visiting England said,
“Your country, sir, is very beautiful. In many parts you may go
for miles together and never see a tree except in a hedge.” Any
one who has had much to do with the peasantry could quote hundreds
of remarks similar to the above.
-----
The second stage is that of loose relation. Emerson’s saying, that
what Nature at one time provides for use she afterwards turns to
ornament, is the formula which sums up this period. The æsthetic
feeling has no fixed connection with the conservation of the
individual; it is called up by occurrences which give its distant,
disinterested echo, serving the purpose of pleasure only. The
legends, the genii, fairies, mythological beings who have become
mere material for poems, pictures, operas, were once a belief, a
reality, a terror, of which we retain only the similitude in the
shape of a game.[214] There are many reasons why the serf of the
Middle Ages was not inspired with any sort of poetry by the Gothic
castles or the donjons built on high rocks whose ruins we admire. It
is possible that one day, under some entirely different
civilisation, our factories, with their tall chimneys, may become
material for art by calling up memories of a vanished past.
-----
Footnote 214:
See Spencer, _Essays_, i. 434, 435.
-----
The third stage is that of complete liberation, which has its
expression in the thesis of art for art’s sake. My object is neither
to defend it, nor to attack it, nor to pronounce judgment on it, but
simply to ascertain its existence in theory and practice, and that
it only makes its appearance at a late age and in mature
civilisation.
To sum up: there is no more an innate and infused notion of the
beautiful than there is an innate and infused notion of the good,
but a system of æsthetics which comes into being just as morality
does; and the history of the æsthetic feeling is that of its
fluctuations during the process of coming into being.
II. The second aspect of its evolution consists in the progressive
movement which sets it free from strict anthropomorphism, gradually
withdrawing it from the purely human and extending it so as to
embrace everything. The best way to follow this movement of
extension is to put the question in a concrete form, as Grant Allen
has done.[215] What objects did man at first consider beautiful, and
in what order did he extend this judgment? In so doing we avoid the
disadvantages of an _a priori_ proceeding and the risk of confusion.
-----
Footnote 215:
_Mind_, 1880, p. 445.
-----
Human beings began by thinking that beautiful which resembled
themselves; the Australian woman admired the Australian man, and the
Fuegian man the Fuegian woman. Primitive æsthetics have a strictly
_specific_ character, and their relations with the sexual instinct
are evident. At this stage they can scarcely be distinguished from
animal æsthetics, if—which is a disputed point—animals are
susceptible to the æsthetic sentiment. In any case their dances,
their music, their tournaments, their ornaments, are only addressed
to individuals of their own species, and have generation as their
object. There is no fact to indicate that, for any species whatever,
there has been any change or progress in this direction.
Man, on the other hand, rose out of this state, in the first
instance, by ornaments added to his person. This addition may seem
futile enough, but in reality it was the first step outside nature.
It has been attempted to define man as a rational, or a religious
animal; he might just as well be defined as an æsthetic animal.[216]
In the colours and designs applied directly on the body, and at a
later period fixed by the operation of tattooing, we already note a
choice, a symmetry, a certain artistic arrangement.
-----
Footnote 216:
I shall be pardoned for introducing the following passage from
Théophile Gautier; it is, under its humorous form, so just from a
psychological point of view: “Ideals torment even the coarsest
natures. The savage, when he tattooes himself, or smears his body
with red and blue, or sticks a fish-bone through his nose, is only
obeying a confused sense of the beautiful. He is seeking for
something beyond what exists; he is trying to perfect his type,
guided by a dim notion of art. The taste for ornament
distinguishes man from brute more clearly than any other
peculiarity. No dog ever thought of putting rings into his ears;
and the stupid Papuans, who eat clay and earthworms, make
themselves earrings of shells and coloured berries.”
-----
From the human body the artistic instinct then extends to whatever
comes in contact with it; it externalises itself, and is applied to
weapons, shields, garments, vases, utensils. From the polished stone
age onward we find a whole arsenal of ornament. In caverns and
tumuli of a date anterior to the use of metals we find necklaces,
bracelets, pins, and rings of pleasing shapes. There exist numerous
and correct representations of various animals drawn or carved at a
time when the reindeer was still living in Central Europe.
We may pass over architecture, an art which was useful from the
first, and of which I have already spoken. It might, if necessary,
be classed as an extension of clothing. Let us only note that, as
far back as the epoch of the lake-dwellings, we observe the taste
for symmetry; it is natural and innate, and probably derived from an
organic source in the arrangement of the human body, the two halves
of which exactly resemble one another.
The poetry of the earliest ages is as yet undifferentiated; being at
once epic, dramatic, and lyric. The generic division was established
later on, but all are characterised by the common trait of being
exclusively human, being concerned with man, with human actions and
human feelings only. Nature is absent, or nearly so, from the
_Iliad_, the _Nibelungenlied_, the _Song of Roland_, etc. The poet
is moved only by those whom Nietzsche calls _Uebermenschen_, gods or
deified men, kings, heroes; and it is only gradually that art
descends to the middle classes or the populace, to the humblest
representatives of humanity.
We need not discuss the origin of music, which has given rise to
various hypotheses; but we find it associated with dancing, at first
in vocal form, _i.e._, translating human emotions by means of the
human organ. Very soon it objectivises itself in instruments of
percussion, extremely rough, but sufficient to mark time or rhythm
accurately, and also to produce a certain physical exaltation of the
senses. Then comes the imitation of the human voice by means of the
flute, and other wind or stringed instruments; and the ever-growing
desire to give utterance by means of music to the most delicate
shades of emotion has brought into existence instruments of
increasing flexibility, number, and complexity, from the invention
of the organ (in the Alexandrian age) up to our own day when
instrumentation plays the preponderant part.
At an early stage the æsthetic activity was exerted to bring animals
into its domain, especially the domestic animals, companions or
servants of man, as is proved by the paintings or sculptures of
India, Egypt, Assyria. The horses of warriors became characters in
heroic poems; so do the dog of Ulysses and that of the Pandavas in
the Hindu epic. They take their place in art by reason of their
moral virtues—bravery, fidelity, etc.
At last we come to the stage where the æsthetic feeling is quite
_dehumanised_; it is no longer attached to men or animals, but to
the vegetable and inorganic world: it is the appearance of the
“feeling for nature.” Its late appearance is a recognised fact, and
I think it needless to accumulate citations in proof. In primitive
poetry, as we have just said, man occupies the foreground; nature is
only an accessory. Very little description suffices in the
beginning—a few lines, or a few epithets merely. Even at a later
date, the Greeks, says Schiller, “artistic as they were, and blessed
with so genial a climate, have some accuracy in the description of a
landscape, but only as they might describe a weapon, a shield, or a
garment. Nature appears to have interested their understanding
rather than their feelings.” The Greco-Roman period became conscious
of some artistic communion with nature only in the so-called
decadent epoch—_i.e._, that of advanced civilisation (Euripides, the
Alexandrians, the Augustan age, and especially the age of Hadrian).
Landscape painting seems to have been almost unknown among the
ancients. Humboldt, in his _Cosmos_, points out that, in the long
catalogue left to us by Philostratus of the pictures of his time, we
find, quite by way of exception, the description of a volcano. In
the time of the Roman Empire mural paintings became a fashion, but
they depicted only a tame and cultivated nature.
Without insisting on well-known facts, we may say that the æsthetic
conquest of nature has passed through two very definite stages.
During the first, art reproduces a smiling, cultivated, fertile
nature, close to man, fashioned by him, bent to his needs,
_humanised_. Such are the Pompeian paintings, and those found in the
villas of the Roman Campagna or the shore of Pozzuoli. During the
second, the taste for primitive, wild, untamed nature is developed,
for the stormy sea, the boundless deserts, glaciers, inaccessible
peaks. The taste for scenery of an abrupt or violent character only
dates, it is said, from the time of Jean-Jacques Rousseau;[217]
certainly, in the eyes of the ancients, and for centuries
afterwards, such scenery consisted merely of horrible spectacles, to
be avoided if possible. The Romans, who so often passed through
Switzerland, found no beauty there; and it will be remembered that
Cæsar, when crossing the Alps, composed a treatise on grammar to
beguile the tedium of the journey. Even in modern times the
revelation of tropical countries and their terrible grandeur has had
but a tardy effect on poetry and art. In the present age, an immense
majority of people feel only repelled by the wildness of nature. It
is, therefore, only for the pleasure of the minority and within the
last century that the relative positions have been inverted; the
human _dramatis personæ_ becoming accessories, and nature furnishing
the main subject of the picture.
-----
Footnote 217:
Sully, _The Human Mind_, vol. ii. p. 144.
-----
This lateness in the appearance of the feeling for nature has been
accounted for in a variety of contradictory ways. Some consider that
this feeling is awakened by contrast; the satiety of civilisation
and disgust at its refinements drive man from it, at least in
imagination, and lead him to seek another ideal elsewhere. Others
(Schneider, Sergi) appeal to ancestral influences; primitive man
feared nature more than he enjoyed her charms (as is still the case
with peasants and children), wild nature, especially, inspiring him
with a superstitious terror, and being, as he believed, full of
maleficent spirits. This terror lasted for a long time, even after
the conception of the world had been changed by the increased
knowledge of physical phenomena, like an echo from ancient times.
Grant Allen points out that facility of communication implies an
advanced state of civilisation; however practical the explanation
may appear, it is not without value; the traveller who has to make
his way across unexplored glaciers, or through virgin forest, is
engaged in unceasing effort and struggle for mere life, which is
incompatible with the disinterested character of æsthetic
contemplation. One needs a certain security to be able to admire.
These explanations seem to me only partial. The true psychological
reason lies in the natural extension of sympathy. We have elsewhere
seen that it implies two principal conditions: an emotional
temperament and a comprehensive power of representation. These
conditions are most likely to be met with in a highly civilised
generation, whose sensibilities are exceedingly acute and subtle,
and their faculty of comprehension greatly extended.
The conquest of nature by intellect and emotion takes place through
a process identical in both cases. There is an ascending movement of
the intellect, which, by way of abstraction and generalisation, goes
on to seek resemblances less and less obvious, and increasingly
difficult to grasp. Certain races stop at the lowest stages: some
ages never pass beyond a certain average of knowledge—_e.g._, the
first centuries of the Middle Ages. In the same way, there is a
progressive movement of feeling towards analogies in nature of ever
greater tenuity, and the same remark applies to races and epochs.
It has been said that the pantheistic tendencies peculiar to certain
peoples, such as those of India, are favourable to a more rapid
development of the feeling for nature. This is, in fact, the thesis
of sympathy under another form, since the assumed community of
nature among all beings involves a community of feeling.
Let us note, in conclusion, that this extension of the æsthetic
feeling to inanimate nature is produced by a process analogous to
that which explains the genesis of benevolence. The pleasures and
pains belong to us, but we attach them to the objects which occasion
them; what we call the soul of things is our own soul projected
outside ourselves and imparted to the things which have been
associated with our feelings.
By a few facts, chosen out of a vast number at our disposal, I have
tried to show that the æsthetic feeling has progressed by evolution
from the social form to that of individualism, and from man to
nature. This mode of _objective_ exposition has seemed to me
preferable, because it allows us to seize in a concrete and
verifiable shape the law of its development and increase in
complexity.
III.
It is usual to include under the same heading as the æsthetic
sentiment two other emotions, that of the sublime and that of the
comic, though I can only perceive a somewhat vague analogy and
partial affinities between them. We shall attempt to see wherein
these three states approximate to and differ from one another.
"The feeling of sublimity is that peculiar emotion which is excited
by the presentation or ideal suggestion of vastness, whether in
space or time (Kant’s ‘mathematical’ sublime), or physical or moral
power (Kant’s ‘dynamical’ sublime)."[218] The distinction generally
drawn between the mathematical and the dynamical sublime appears to
me quite secondary, as the two cases reduce themselves to the idea
of a force in action. Current opinion asserts that the emotion of
the sublime is simpler than the æsthetic emotion properly so called.
If we understand by this that the latter is richer in its
development, much more complex, much more varied in aspect,
comprehending the pretty, the graceful, the purely beautiful, the
pathetic, etc., the opinion cannot be disputed; but if we mean that
the sense of sublimity is simpler as regards its origin, we cannot
admit it. I have already given the emotion of the sublime as an
example of a binary combination (Part II., Chap. VII.) formed by
synthesis of (_a_) a painful feeling of oppression, dejection,
lowered vitality, reducible to one primary emotion—fear; (_b_) the
consciousness of a rush, of violent energy in action, of a
heightening of vitality, reducible to one primary emotion—the sense
of personal power, “self-feeling” under its positive form. Moreover,
one negative condition is necessary: the conscious or unconscious
feeling of our security in the presence of some formidable power.
Without this last all æsthetic feeling disappears.
-----
Footnote 218:
Sully, _The Human Mind_, vol. ii. p. 146.
-----
The sentiment of the sublime loses the egoism which lies at its root
by extending, through sympathy, to men and things. In participating,
through the imagination, in the grandeur of a real or fictitious
personage,—the Napoleon of history, the Moses of Michael Angelo, the
Satan of Milton,—the _ego_ is objectivised and alienated. It is the
history of this development that we must now follow.
“Human might,” says Bain, “is the true and literal sublime, and the
point of departure for the sublimity of other things.” This is, in
fact, the starting-point. Grant Allen[219] has brilliantly
illustrated this view, by trying to demonstrate that the feeling of
the sublime has been evolved from a narrow anthropomorphism—the
admiration for man’s physical strength—towards the sublimity of
moral and intellectual qualities, and that of mass and time in
nature. This conception deserves to be given in a condensed form,
though it is somewhat of an outline, and not without lacunæ: neither
is it certain, whatever this writer may say, that the terror with
which man was inspired by natural phenomena did not show itself at a
very early period, in a form approaching to the emotion of
sublimity.
-----
Footnote 219:
_Mind_, October 1878.
-----
According to Grant Allen, the earliest object of human
admiration—_i.e._, of a feeling of respect mingled with fear—is the
strong man, the invincible warrior, whom none can resist. This
feeling shows itself even among the higher animals, with regard to
each other, and still more unmistakably among children: they admire
physical strength. In the course of social progress, the chief or
despotic king, with power of life and death over all, becomes the
incarnation of power—the sublime object—and so the feeling is
specialised. After his death, it is believed that his surviving
“double,” or ghost, is invested with the same, or even greater
privileges. Thus the feeling hitherto enclosed within the world of
experience is transferred to a supersensuous region.
The author might have shown that, at this stage of evolution, the
idea of an intellectual power, proved by superior knowledge and
foresight, and that of a great moral power, proved by courage and
energy in effort, must have inspired the same feeling.
As, at this period, everything in nature is conceived as alive, man
has necessarily assimilated natural forces to human power: as with
thunderstorms, hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Looking at
mountains, he seems to see a superhuman power which has raised them.
Finally, the movement of thought, continually going on, leads to the
idea of a paramount or sole deity, considered as absolute and
unlimited power, and the maker of all.
As for the sublimity of mass, it was probably first felt in presence
of great monuments, temples, palaces, pyramids, tombs, constructed
by the pride of kings, and suggesting the idea of their vast power
and the enormous amount of human strength expended. As for sublimity
in the immensity of time, it is not attached to the conception of
empty and abstract time: it moves us because it appears to us as
peopled by a myriad of past or possible events, of activities
succeeding each other with unfailing prodigality.
Thus all these cases are reduced to an overwhelming force, conceived
by analogy and felt by sympathy. Taking this evolution in its main
lines, it has passed through two principal periods, one of
predominant terror, which is not and cannot be æsthetic, and one of
predominant admiration and sympathy, where the consciousness of
personal safety gives the feeling a disinterested character: here
emotion has _become_ æsthetic. It is probable, says Sully, that this
feeling passed from a disagreeable into an agreeable one, and became
æsthetic “through the elimination of the gross element of personal
fear.”[220]
-----
Footnote 220:
_The Human Mind_, ii. p. 148.
-----
Attempts have been made to reduce the emotion of the sublime to
a contrast; it rests rather on a harmony, a synthesis of
contradictories (in the Hegelian sense); it is a case of
_combination_, as we have tried to show in another part of this
work. It is neither fear nor pride (consciousness of strength)
felt directly or by sympathy, but a product of their coexistence
in consciousness, and their fusion in a special state which can
never be completely dissociated by analysis. In short, it is far
more closely related to the two primary feelings already named
than to the æsthetic feeling, to which it approximates, not by
nature, but by accident.[221]
Footnote 221:
Æsthetic activity is that form of play which uses images as its
creative materials. It is generally admitted that visual and
auditory perceptions or representations are the only ones which
provoke æsthetic emotion; yet Guyau (followed perhaps by others)
has maintained that we must attribute this power to all external
sensations, without exception (_Problèmes de l’esthétique
contemporaine_, chap. vi.), heat, cold, contacts, tastes, and
odours; but the facts he enumerates are in most cases referable to
association, especially where odours are concerned. The so-called
lower sensations do not act directly, they only revive the
representations of sight and hearing. A delicious coolness, a soft
contact, an intoxicating odour produce an agreeable state—_i.e._,
a physical pleasure, and nothing more, if there is no association.
Besides, without entering into an idle and hair-splitting
discussion, it is sufficient to observe that, as a matter of fact,
there exists no art, in the æsthetic sense, based on any other
sensations than those of sight and hearing, unless we are to look
on perfumery and cookery as such.
Why is this privilege exclusively confined to two species of
sensations? Various reasons have been given: because they are more
remote from the life-serving functions with which the sensations
of touch, taste, and smell are closely connected (II. Spencer); or
because their pleasures and pains have, in general, a moderate
character, and their special nerves are rarely subjected to a
violent shock (Gurney); or, according to Grant Allen, because the
nerves of the lower senses are excited in mass, and those of the
higher by isolated fibres (? ?). It appears to me that one of the
principal reasons has been forgotten. If we refer back to the
inquiries detailed in Chap. IX. (Part I.) as to the olfactory and
gustatory images, we shall see that they have their own peculiar
characters. For visual and auditory images, revival and
association are easy, whether simultaneously, in groups, or
successively, in series. For images of smell and taste, it is
quite the contrary; their revivability is feeble or _nil_, their
power of association with each other _nil_. (The tactile-motor
images form an intermediate group, but nearer to the lower
senses.) These psychological conditions render them quite
unsuitable for a place in a constructive scheme. Called up with
great difficulty by the memory, incapable of being grouped, either
in simultaneities or in series, they can supply neither an art in
rest nor an art in movement.
IV.
It is also through an abuse of language that the emotional state
designated by the various names of a sense of the laughable, of the
ridiculous, of the comic, is considered as a department of æsthetic
emotion, for no other reason, as it seems, than because the comic
enters into all the arts and produces a disinterested pleasure. Its
domain, however, extends far beyond this. It has been closely
studied in the general and special works of Darwin, Piderit,
Spencer, L. Dumont, Hecker, Kräpelin, and others; and I do not
propose to dwell on it at length, having very little to offer in the
way of personal opinion on the subject. Yet this manifestation of
the affective life, with its peculiar mode of expression, laughter,
cannot be omitted from a complete treatise on the feelings.
This subject presents two aspects, one internal, subjective,
psychological, the other external, objective, physiological. The
latter presents no difficulties, being susceptible of an exact
description; but to connect it with an internal cause, to say why
one laughs, is a very difficult problem, which has been solved in
various manners. In my opinion the error lies in thinking that
laughter has _a cause_. It has very distinct _causes_ which,
seemingly, can be reduced no further, or, at least, their unity has
not hitherto been discovered. If we were to recount only a few of
the numerous definitions of laughter current in books, we should
find none that was not in some way open to criticism, because there
is none which embraces the question in all its manifold aspects.
Thus L. Dumont, in a special work on Laughter, says, “It is an
assemblage of muscular movements, corresponding to a feeling of
pleasure.” Is the laughter caused by tickling, by cold, or by the
ingestion of certain substances, the hysteric laughter alternating
with tears, the nervous laughter of soldiers in action, after the
moment of danger is over—are all these to be put down to the account
of pleasure? Even if we class these and analogous facts by
themselves, as purely reflex actions, there still remain
difficulties.
1. Considered from the purely psychological point of view, the
mental state which shows itself in laughter consists, according to
some, in the consciousness of incongruity, of a certain kind of
contradiction; according to others, in a consciousness of
superiority in relation to men and things on the part of the
laugher.
The first view seems to number most adherents. It assumes as a
fundamental fact the grasping of a contrast between two perceptions,
images, or ideas. Yet all contradictory contrasts do not make us
laugh; if they are to do so, they must fulfil certain conditions. In
the first place, the two contradictory elements must be given
simultaneously as belonging to the same object, so as to induce us
to think that a thing both is and is not at the same time. A monkey
makes us laugh, because he reminds us of, but is not, a man; he
makes us laugh still more if dressed in human clothes, because the
contradiction is more striking. Next, the two states of
consciousness must be very nearly of the same mass and intensity—a
broken-down old man carrying a heavy burden does not make us laugh.
“The two contradictory forces brought into play in laughter, being
unable to attain to the unity of a conception, are forced to escape
outwards by an expenditure of muscular energy” (L. Dumont).
The second theory, first formulated by Hobbes, but perhaps of still
earlier date, is as follows: “The passion of laughter is nothing
else but sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some
eminency in ourselves by comparison with the infirmity of others or
with our own formerly.”[222] The partisans of this view have
severely criticised the theory of incongruity, or discordance in
things. “An instrument out of tune, a fly in ointment, snow in May,
Archimedes studying geometry in a siege; ... everything of the
nature of disorder; ... and whatever is unnatural; the entire
catalogue of the vanities given by Solomon—are all incongruous, but
they cause feelings of pain, anger, sadness, loathing, rather than
mirth.”[223] This view is quite as open to criticism as the
preceding; and we might enumerate a long list of cases where the
feeling of superiority, whether justifiable or not, does not make us
laugh. In my opinion, both views ought to be admitted, as being
partially true, and meeting distinct cases.
-----
Footnote 222:
Hobbes, _Human Nature_ (2nd ed.), 1650.
Footnote 223:
Bain, _The Emotions_, p. 257.
-----
The second theory is suited to the primitive and lower form of that
emotional state which shows itself in laughter. In the case before
us, this state is directly derived from the sense of strength or
power, or, as Hobbes calls it, glory; the contradictory contrast, if
perceived at all, is in the background. The coarsest and most
brutal, almost physiological, expression of this mental state, is
the laugh of the savage after a victory, when treading his
vanquished enemy under foot.
“It appears to be fairly certain, not only that laughter is a
concomitant of brutality and cruelty among uncivilised races, and
children, but that even in the cases of the more refined and
benevolent, it is apt to accompany the recognition of any slight
loss of dignity in another, when this loss does not evoke other and
painful feelings.”[224] It is a matter of common observation, that
many people have a tendency immediately to burst out laughing at any
accident, even if serious, happening to others; and this instinctive
laughter certainly does not spring from the good side of human
nature. It is clear that, under this form, laughter has nothing to
do with æsthetics.
-----
Footnote 224:
Sully, _Sensation and Intuition_, p. 262; _The Human Mind_, i. p.
148.
-----
The theory of discord suits well with the secondary and superior
forms: the feeling of superiority becomes effaced and passes into
the background. It is an intellectualised manifestation, which has
or may have an æsthetic value, the mental development permitting
those fugitive and subtle contradictions which constitute the
principal element of the comic to be caught on the wing. It takes on
an almost disinterested character, though never, perhaps, completely
losing its original blemish.
Finally, laughter may take a still more elevated form in the
humorous spirit we have already mentioned (Part II., Chap V., 3), in
which the feeling of superiority is mitigated by a large proportion
of sympathy.
2. The nature of laughter would be very incompletely known were we
to confine ourselves to pure psychology, but the physiological study
of this phenomenon has not been neglected. The description will be
found in special works on the expression of the emotions, especially
in Darwin (chap. viii.). Laughter is a strengthened expiratory
movement; when prolonged, the excess of the expirations over the
inspirations necessitates deep sighs in order to restore the
equilibrium; there is a drawing back and raising of the corners of
the mouth, the eyes become brighter through the quickening of the
circulation. According to Darwin, the uninterrupted gradation from
violent laughter (which in all human races is accompanied by tears)
to moderate laughter, a broad smile and a gentle smile, proves their
common nature; but is laughter the complete development of the
smile, or the smile a modified form of the noisy laughter of the
first period? Evolutionists are, in general, inclined to consider
noisy laughter as the primary form, connected with the brutal sense
of superiority. Yet the early appearance of the smile in infants, at
about two months, while laughter is not observed, as a rule, till
the fourth month, seems, on this theory, to contradict the principle
that the evolution of the individual reproduces, in an abridged and
accelerated form, the evolutionary process of the species. On the
other hand, animals do not give us any information on this point.
Certain monkeys smile or laugh—_i.e._, the corners of the mouth are
drawn back, their eyes become brilliant, and they emit a certain
sound approximating to a chuckle (Darwin, Wallace, Mantegazza,
etc.).
But the important point is to know why this collection of
physiological facts is connected with certain mental dispositions.
If laughter were the constant and exclusive expression of joy and
pleasure, the answer would be easy; as in addition to this it is
sometimes morbid, sometimes futile and simply physiological, the
explanation ought to be framed to include all these cases.
Herbert Spencer has proposed one, which, though published some time
ago (1863), still remains one of the most satisfactory. In his
view[225] laughter is due to a sudden diversion of nervous energy
into a new path—an overflow-channel. The excitation of the nervous
system existing at any given moment, especially if intense, can only
be expended in three ways—either by transmission to some other part
of the cerebro-spinal organism, exciting other feelings or thoughts;
or by acting on the viscera, the heart, lungs, and digestive organs;
or else by producing muscular movements; and, as the nervous
discharge, especially if moderate, follows the line of least
resistance, and the most easily moved muscles are the first to be
shaken, it acts on the vocal organs, on the mouth, and on the face.
Laughter is connected with this last line of action.
-----
Footnote 225:
“Physiology of Laughter,” _Essays_, vol. i. (1883) pp. 194 _et
seq._
-----
It may result from purely physical excitants: tickling, cold, toxic
action, sudden relaxation after a long period of constraint.
It may be connected with representations—_i.e._, have a psychical
cause. Spencer admits the theory of incongruity, and defines it more
precisely. He distinguishes the ascending incongruity, which goes
from the less to the greater, and the descending incongruity between
the greater and the less. The latter alone provokes laughter. There
must be a sudden transition from one intense state of consciousness
to one which is much less intense, while forming a complete contrast
to it. Thus, while we are listening to a symphony, a sneeze on the
part of one of the spectators may make us laugh. During a
reconciliation scene, on the stage, between two lovers, after a long
estrangement, a goat begins to bleat, and so introduces a comic
element. The heightened attention of the first moment is suddenly
transferred to a trifling incident which does not supply it with
sufficient matter on which to expend itself; the surplus has to find
an outlet, and this produces laughter.
The excess of emotion, when it does not give a shock to the whole
frame, and is not the result of a contrast, takes another
direction—_e.g._, the automatic actions of certain barristers or
other public speakers, of the embarrassed schoolboy twisting his pen
between his fingers, etc.
Hecker, in a special work, propounds another hypothesis.[226] He
connects everything with a typical fact—tickling, which explains the
laughter arising from physical, and that arising from mental causes.
-----
Footnote 226:
_Physiologie und Psychologie des Lachens und des Komischen_
(1873). For criticisms, see Léon Dumont, _Theorie scientifique de
la sensibilité_, p. 211; Piderit, _Mimik_, pp. 138 _et seq._
-----
In tickling, there is, first, the effect produced by each cutaneous
sensation: excitement of the vaso-motor and the great sympathetic
nerves, dilatation of the pupil, brightness of the eyes,
constriction of the vessels, as may be verified experimentally in
the application of a mustard plaster or a sudden effusion of hot
water. There is another necessary condition: intermittence; for
tickling, there must be change in the rate or direction of the
movements, or interruption.
The expiration corresponds to the moment of contact, the expiration
to that of interruption; in the first case the diaphragm is raised,
in the second lowered. To sum up, tickling is an intermittent
excitation of the skin producing an intermittent excitement of the
vaso-motor nerves and the respiration, and an alternation of
pleasurable and uncomfortable states. But what is the use of
laughter in this occurrence? Its function is protective, it
compensates for the diminished pressure of the blood on the brain;
the frequent expirations which compress the thorax, and consequently
the heart, the larger vessels and the lungs, prevent the
blood-vessels from emptying themselves.
As to intellectually-caused laughter, Hecker, who borrows his
psychology from the æsthetician Fischer, and seems to fuse together
the two theories of contrast and superiority, traces all
manifestations of this kind to the comic. Now, in the comic there
are two simultaneous states: one, pleasurable, the sense of our own
superiority; the other unpleasant, the contradiction in the object.
Hence a rapid alternation of pleasure and pain. The comic is an
intermittent impression, which acts like tickling; it is a psychical
titillation which, like the other, shows itself in laughter, and for
the same cause. Such is Hecker’s theory in its main outlines.
In conclusion, laughter manifests itself in circumstances so
numerous and heterogeneous—physical sensations, joy, contrast,
surprise, oddity, strangeness, baseness, etc.—that the reduction of
all these causes to a single one is very problematical. In spite of
all the work devoted to so trivial a matter, the question is far
from being completely elucidated.
V.
The pathology of the æsthetic sentiment would require a work to
itself.[227] We must here confine ourselves to some remarks on the
most general physiological conditions producing it, and on the
natural causes nearly always at work to produce deviation.
-----
Footnote 227:
The only attempt in this direction I am acquainted with is
Nordau’s book, _Degeneration_ (_Entartung_), which is limited to
the present day, and, moreover, treats of other questions as well.
-----
Can the faculty of artistic feeling be absolutely wanting? Are there
cases of complete insensibility to every artistic manifestation,
however humble? I do not think it in any wise rash to affirm this.
_A priori_ since the existence of moral blindness and religious
indifference is certain, it is improbable that a superfluous emotion
should have, in all men without exception, an indelible character.
As a matter of fact, it is difficult to supply the proof; the
insensibility passes unnoticed, having no injurious consequences to
the individual or to society. However, partial cases, at least, may
be observed. Total insensibility to music is not rare, and if this
is a known fact, it is because it is the most easily verified.[228]
Many people declare that the reading or hearing of poetry bores and
wearies them to an extreme degree, and they cannot understand why
poets take so much trouble, when it would be so much easier to
express themselves in prose.
-----
Footnote 228:
There is, with regard to this point, a very complete observation
of Grant Allen’s (“Note Deafness,” in _Mind_, iii. 1878). The
subject, a young man of great intellectual cultivation, had
studied music during his childhood without result. It was
discovered, later on, that he was incapable of distinguishing one
note from another, except at intervals which were sometimes as
much as an octave, or even more. He was quite unconscious of
harmonies and discords, or the _timbre_ of instruments. The
distinctive features of the latter were, for him, only clearly
perceived noises of different kinds—a sound of wire-work for the
piano, a scraping for the violin, a puff of air for the organ. He
was very sensitive to the rhythm of poetry. It is not known
whether anomalies of this kind originate in Corti’s organs or in
the cerebral centres.
-----
Leaving these extreme cases in order to consider pathology proper,
we may first ask ourselves whether we really have here a subject for
study, or whether we are pursuing a mere chimera. The question is
not here put quite in the same form as elsewhere. Pathology
signifies disorder, deviation, anomaly; now, in æsthetic activity,
where is the rule? It has often been repeated that the essence of
art is absolute liberty. I see no objection to this statement; art
has its end in itself, and is subject to no other requirement than
that of creating works able to live, accepted by contemporaries,
and, if possible, by posterity also. By what method, then, can we
decide that any given æsthetic manifestation is normal or abnormal?
Such a decision can be merely arbitrary. We have not even the
resource of saying that everything belonging to beauty is healthy,
and everything belonging to ugliness unhealthy; for—not to mention
that the line of demarcation between the two is frequently very
vague—the ugly is admitted into all the arts by way of ingredient or
foil, and one author (Rosenkranz) has even written on the “Æsthetics
of the Ugly.” I see only one way of escaping from the difficulty,
viz., transposing the subject, studying, not the pathology of the
æsthetic feeling itself, but that of the source whence it emanates;
in other words, considering it merely as a symptom. This requires
some explanation.
Every failure of harmony between the tendencies which constitute a
healthy human being shows itself in a disturbance of equilibrium, an
anomaly in the affective life. This deviation from normal life may
be considered under two aspects: one general, the other special; one
human, the other professional.
If we consider it under its general form—_i.e._, as simply inherent
in the human constitution—the want of equilibrium expresses itself
in many ways, following different directions according to
temperament, character, and circumstances, such as melancholia,
phobias, sexual aberrations, irresistible impulses, etc.
If we consider it under its special, particular form, as peculiar
to a given individual carrying on a given occupation and having
given habits of life—an artisan, a labourer, a tradesman, a
lawyer, a physician, etc.—the disturbed balance will appear to us
as setting its mark on the individual’s professional activity and
its products. The artisan will pass from a fury of work to
excesses of idleness or drink; the merchant from exaggerated
caution to a reckless daring in his enterprises; and the same in
every trade or profession. Now art is a profession like any other,
and the artistic _product_ must bear the mark of the craftsman—a
mark of disequilibrium in the present case. Consequently the
anomalies of the æsthetic sentiment may be studied by comparison,
not with an imaginary norm, not with any alleged regulative
principles of art with which we are unacquainted, but with a
psychological criterion; they may be studied as the effects and
the revelation of a morbid diathesis. To speak more simply, we
have to deal, not with æsthetics, but with psycho-pathology in
connection with æsthetics.
Even thus transposed, the subject still presents inevitable
difficulties, the principal being as follows. With regard to the
psycho-physiological constitution of the creative artist, there are
two theories. (We must not forget that, in the amateur, or mere
taster of works of art, the same psychological conditions are
required, though in a less degree, being more strongly accentuated
in proportion as he feels more acutely.)
One of these theories, set forth in many well-known works, maintains
that æsthetic superiority is incompatible with health of mind and
body. The facts in support of it have often been very uncritically
collected, and among the characters mentioned as typical we find all
sorts. Among creative artists there are vigorous men and puny ones,
tall and short, handsome and deformed, weak-willed and enterprising,
slowly-developed and precocious, misanthropists and men of pleasure,
the morose and the cheerful. In short, we can only conclude, at
most, that they have a tendency to depart from the average—whether
to rise above it or fall below it.
According to the other theory, all this is secondary, accessory,
physical and psychical defects being by no means a necessary
condition of genius. It grows equally well on a sound stem or a
rotten one; it bears the marks of its origin, but this is quite a
matter of accident. There are also facts in support of this view,
though it must be acknowledged that they are less numerous than
those on the other side.
We may also generalise the question, and ask whether æsthetic
activity is not always a deviation. Nordau has maintained the
affirmative: “Art is the slight beginning of a deviation from
complete health.” Thus presented, the question is equivocal. If we
understand by mental health the _ataraxia_ of the ancient
philosophers, it is clear that creative and even æsthetic enjoyments
are incompatible with it. To demand that we shall create or enjoy
without excitement, remaining all the time in the level, prosaic
calm of every-day life, is to expect the impossible. On this showing
we might say as much of any emotion whatever and allege it to be a
deviation from health. Some intellectualists, Kant among others,
have ventured to make this claim, which is as much as to say that
man is, by nature, an exclusively reasonable being—so enormous a
psychological error that we need not discuss it. Besides, even
supposing this to be the ideal, the mission of psychology is not to
study an ideal man, but the real one.
After this somewhat lengthy preamble, rendered necessary by the
ambiguity of our subject, let us investigate the part played by the
two essential factors, emotion and imagination, when their activity
is pathological, and in clearly-defined cases.
I. The necessity for vividness and sincerity of feeling in the
artist is so obvious that I need not insist on it. This disposition,
however, is not in all cases identical. Acute emotion may be
intermittent, appearing only at moments of inspiration and creation,
and then, the crisis over, disappearing to let the emotional life
take its normal course. This is the characteristic of healthy genius
or talent, which, descending from the heights, returns and adapts
itself to the groove of ordinary life. A more frequent case, if we
may judge by biographical documents, especially as we approach our
own day, is the state of permanent excitement or hyper-excitability.
Artists and dilettanti are exceedingly delicate instruments
vibrating continually to every sound. Here our triple criterion of
pathological activity comes again into use: we find (apparent)
disproportion between cause and effect, violent and prolonged shock
to the system, chronicity. This physiological state is one of
continual loss; not a combustion, but a series of explosions; not a
life, but a fever. Hence the craving for artificial excitement so
frequent in emotional natures of this kind; they seek it under all
its forms, and the remedy aggravates the evil. It is needless to
multiply examples, we need only recall the great contingent of
melancholiacs, hypochondriacs, alcoholics—persons subject to
hallucinations, insane, or merely _déséquilibrés_—furnished by
artists or passionate lovers of art. Besides these general
characteristics, we may note as particular pathological symptoms of
æsthetic emotion: